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Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

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MacEros
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Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by MacEros »

I thought it would be a good idea to list any art or combat mechanic changes that have occurred since Lyra-UL so that new players will know the differences. We can also use this to discuss if we like the changes or if they should be reverted to the Lyra version. I hated most of the changes, and preferred the Lyra version, but I will try to keep bias to a minimum. Please comment below if I have left out any changes.

Dreamsoul Amount- Characters now have less dreamsoul then they did before. I believe at 5th sphere in lyra-ul I had about 75 dreamsoul and in the SoT version 5th sphere would have about 45 dreamsoul.

Shields- Shields were changed to offset this. In lyra-ul the durability was decreased for each point of damage absorbed by a shield. So if you had a shield with 100 durability and 50% absorption and you were hit for 50 damage, your shield would lose 25 points of durability from that single hit. In SoT, every hit took away 1 point of durability no matter the damage it took. This made shields very important and most people used shields in SoT that were about 50% absorption or higher.

Chakram damage- Chakram damage was significantly lowered. Combined with the shields, this made combat take much longer. In lyra-ul, a 5th sphere character had about 75 dreamsoul and could use lvl 50 chaks that did 1-50 damage. Most people did not use shields, or if they did, they only lasted a few hits anyway, so 2-3 good hits in a row could collapse someone. In SoT, with the chakram damage reduction and the changes to shields, it took 8-9 good hits in a row to collapse someone. Collapsing people 1 vs 1 was nearly impossible and became a content to see who's inventory could last the longest.

Breakthrough- All offensive arts were granted breakthrough chance. For Example: If you had Free Action on, Paralyze had a chance to ignore your free action and paralyze you anyway. It was based on level of the arts so lvl 1 free action would be basically pointless against lvl 30 paralyze. As the levels of the offensive arts went up, so did the breakthrough percentage, even against equal level protection arts. So lvl 29 paralyze has probably a 20% chance to breakthrough lvl 29 free action, but lvl 59 paralyze has about a 50% chance to breakthrough level 59 free action. Breakthrough applied to all fatesender arts, Curse and Antidote had to breakthrough Poison to cure it. A 5th sphere Fatesender with 59 paralyze could keep you permanently paralyzed by chain casting it, even if you had 59 free action on. They could also use 59 darkness to keep an entire room permanently blinded by chain casting darkness even with 59 vision on.

Shatter/Blend changes- This is similar to breakthrough, but a little different. The level of Shatter or Blend HAD to be equal to or higher than the level of ward to shatter or blend through it. Level 48 blend would have a 0% chance of blending through a lvl 49 ward and a lvl 49 or higher blend would always blend through the ward. Same with shatter. If a Gatekeeper's shatter was lower level then their ward, they were unable to shatter their own ward. This made shatter and blend basically pointless until they were plateaued to your orbit.

Restore- Because of the changes to Dreamsoul and shields and since it took 7-8 hits in a row to collapse someone instead of 2-3, restore was much more powerful then it was in Lyra-ul. A restorer chain restoring a single person would be impossible for somebody to collapse by their self. Restore was also changed so that if you were in a sanctuary, it restored about 25% of the normal value.

Dreamsoul Elemen delay- The delay to use dreamsoul elemens was increased in SoT. In Lyra-ul they introduced the delay of about 1 second, but it has since been increased, I believe it is now about 2+ seconds. Dreamsoul elemens in SoT did restore a larger percentage of your dreamsoul then in Lyra-ul. In SoT, a 5th sphere has about 45 dreamsoul and there were dreamsoul elemens that restore +35 dreamsoul. So every 2 seconds, you could almost completely restore all your dreamsoul.

Judgement- Judgement no longer tells your target that you have evoked it on them. While this is nice, I do miss the "ZOMG YOU EVOKED JUDGEMENT ON ME! DIE!!!"

Minor arts changed to Majors- Restore, Free Action, Resist Fear, Protection, Vision, Reweave, and Scare have all been made into major arts for their respective focuses. So you had to take your shields to a Soulmaster to get them reweave. Only Gatekeepers had protection art. If breakthrough did not exist, this would have been a huge bonus for Gatekeepers, but because of how breakthrough worked and since lvl 51 alterors were available, they were largely pointless unless the Gatekeeper was over 5th sphere. The main complaint I heard about all of this was that only soulmasters could restore someone from a Soulsphere. So if you were collapsed and there was no soulmaster around, you had to go to a sanctuary.

Minor arts- In Lyra-UL, minor arts could only be plateaued to 29. The minor arts that are still left: Deafen, Purify, Identify, Judgement, Sprint can now be plateaued to your current sphere.

New Art Sprint- Sprint is a new 3rd sphere gatekeeper minor art. Other focuses can learn it at 5th sphere and are able to plateau it to their current sphere. It lasts 10 seconds per plateau and causes you to run twice as fast. At lower plateaus it is practically pointless, but once it is around level 30, you can start to stack the duration, but you're generally better off waiting for it to fall off then recasting it. You can use it in battle and it is hard to hit someone with a chakram who is sprinting, especially with server lag. I suggested several times for the effect to be removed when you use an offensive art, similar to how Chamele functions.

New Art Enfeeblement- Enfeeblement is a new 4th sphere fatesender major art. It has the longest duration of any fatesender art (I think 10 seconds per plateau) and it reduced the target's movement speed to half. It is very hard to dodge chakrams when you are enfeebled. There is no counter to this art. If you have sprint on, being hit with enfeeblement makes you move at regular speed. This effect can be found on genned chakrams. If you are enfeebled and the person you're fighting has sprint, it will be pretty much impossible for you to dodge any of their shots or for you to hit them.

Energy- Since there were no mares for the majority of SoT, energy orbs appeared at fonts. These could be added to house primes instead of nightmare essences for house functions such as initiating dreamers.

Energy Arts- Energy could also be used to cast arts to improve or alter items. These all cost energy that you collected in order to cast them. One art changed the focus of a chakram to your focus for 100 energy. Another increased the speed of a genned chakram. You could use one to increase the durability or absorption of shields. There might have been one that used energy to recharge an item coded, but it was never introduced if so. Changing the focus of a chakram was fairly cheap, but the rest were all very expensive and would take you a long time to gen the necessary energy to make much of a change in the item.



Those are all the changes I can think of right now, please comment below any that I have left out.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Koi-Spark »

That is hugely helpful. Thanks for putting that together. As someone who didn't play SoT after these changes, I can say it's good to know some of these things. I wondered about the energy system, but hadn't really thought about needing a replacement for nightmares.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Koi-Rhododendron »

Few minor corrections:

Sprint and Enfeeblement both had a duration of 5 seconds, plus 5 per plateau, not ten.

The delay in elemen use was increased closer to 1.5 seconds, I believe, though I am uncertain of this value.

Realign, the art that changed chakram focus, could also be used to change the element of an elemen to your focus element.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Cherokee »

Every focus is unique in their own way, which means there needs to be a certain amount of dependency to validate their existence -otherwise everyone would just be the same focus. So these are my thoughts on how to achieve that:

Shatter/Blend: Breakthrough is definitely needed in this case, because Ward would pretty much be useless without it.

Restore should be less powerful, but allowed in sanctuary without a dampened percentage. It shouldn't be impossible to collapse a Soulmaster/someone being restored, and I don't think damage should be reduced if they were smart enough to party up beforehand and successfully sneak off to a sanc.

The minor to major arts should stay the same, because it brings about a need for the other foci. And since being in a house is largely enforced: this plays off of that, and pushes people to work together.

To bring more importance back to a Gatekeeper, I think alterors should only be spawning at level 0. That way, they can only be used to build up a duration, and a Gatekeeper would be needed to strengthen it. The same goes for Dreamseers, with Vision alts. Also, (possibly) I think the lower level alts should be able to stack duration on top of the higher level art that was evoked on you.

Sprint: I agree it should be canceled out when an offensive act is made. It should also be switched to a GK major, but targetable on others. And it should be upped to 20 seconds per platt.

Purify and Judgment should be switched to majors. Also, I liked how Judgment alerted the dreamer too - it brought about more conflict.

Enfeeblement: Sprint should be its counter, using the breakthrough percentage.

Breakthrough needs to be revised.

Shields should spawn, at the highest, 50% absorption and 75 durability. Anything higher is ridiculous, imo.

Chakram Damage: I think it should be reverted back to the way it was in Lyra.

Dreamsoul cooldown: I like the way it was in SoT. Too many people abused them.
23:48:24: Laviticas: (( I am going to ****ing say this now because I will not be back in the stupid game.)

22:44:20: >Jawsman evokes his own dreamquake, which is bigger than Magnilia's dreamquake.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Cherokee »

I meant if someone was hit with Enfeeblement while wearing Sprint, they would have to try and breakthrough it to cancel it out. Like, say.. Dreamer A is being attacked by Dreamer B and tries to Sprint away, but doesn't fight back...it should only fall off if Dreamer B evokes Enfeeblement and it breaks through. Sprint should only be canceled out if the -sprinter- does an offensive act, or is Enfeebled (depending if it breaks through or not).
23:48:24: Laviticas: (( I am going to ****ing say this now because I will not be back in the stupid game.)

22:44:20: >Jawsman evokes his own dreamquake, which is bigger than Magnilia's dreamquake.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Koi-Spark »

Cherokee wrote:I meant if someone was hit with Enfeeblement while wearing Sprint, they would have to try and breakthrough it to cancel it out. Like, say.. Dreamer A is being attacked by Dreamer B and tries to Sprint away, but doesn't fight back...it should only fall off if Dreamer B evokes Enfeeblement and it breaks through. Sprint should only be canceled out if the -sprinter- does an offensive act, or is Enfeebled (depending if it breaks through or not).
I think the way it works now (and correct me if I'm wrong, this may require some testing) is that if someone has both Sprint and Enfeeblement active on them, they're basically just normal speed. That way, if you are Enfeebled, you can evoke Sprint to return you to normal speed to help counter-act it.

The levels play into this because if you get a level 50 Enfeebled on you and you evoke a level 10 Sprint, you will still be Enfeebled when Sprint wears off. I don't think one should completely cancel the effect of the other.

It's like taking uppers and downers at the same time.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Surak »

I think you should get rid of all of those changes except:

Sprint: I like this. As Protectors of the dream it makes sense that GKs would need to move swiftly through the city to respond to threats. Also gives them the ability to rally a fighting force and move the force to battle quickly. I see Enfeeblement as the counter to this art and vice versa. I'm torn over whether or not to cancel when then target uses offensive art/weapon. Ultimately I think rooms are too small to allow effective combat with combatants using Sprint. Have offensive arts/ weapons cancel it.

Shields: I think some middle ground would be appropriate. Shields should be able to take more than a couple of hits. And maybe instead of being destroyed at 0 durability, there was just a chance it would be destroyed.

I really like the idea of an art that could change the focus of items. If you're bringing back mares make people drain essence to get energy. It would make things interesting. Can you drain a dreamer's essence or just mares? You should be able to drain a dreamer's essence.

The drain essence debate made for some fun story lines.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Koi-Alastar »

I believe this has been stated in IRC and other mediums, but I just want to reinforce the fact that no Art/coding changes will be possible on day 1. The current objective is to get the game functional and get players inside playing. Once that is accomplished, the tweaks of "How much should Restore heal", "Breakthrough chances", "Shield absorption", etc can be addressed.

From my perspective, break through is needed in order for FateSenders to be at all competent before FireStorm. If a skill 1 Free Action can prevent a skill 99 Paralyze, then they are rendered useless. I do agree, however, that the exact % chances and the scale-ability should be addressed, and we have already discussed that.

I agree that high-level Alterors render GKs redundant. Placing a maximum that can be genned is a good idea.

Free Action makes better sense, to me, as a counter to Enfeeble.

Agree, in general, regarding the various changes to DreamSoul amount, chakram damage, Elemen restore, and Shield absorb caused fights to last boringly long and come down to a battle of equipment. There are a number of ways to address this, but do be aware that any changes to one will affect the others. I do not feel that the Lyra system of stats/chaks/shields was a vast improvement over SoT system, it was merely "quicker". There is probably a happy medium we can reach.


I greatly like the idea of "energy" tokens being the result of Drain Essence. Currently, the Energy Arts can be powered by Banish/Imprison tokens, so the other factions would not be at a disadvantage...also, yes, player essences can be used by first converting them to energy tokens at the "converter pad". Perhaps Drain Essence can simply be changed to produce a "Raw Energy" token that multiplies the essence strength, a la Banish/Imprison.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Onyx »

Breakthrough- All offensive arts were granted breakthrough chance. For Example: If you had Free Action on, Paralyze had a chance to ignore your free action and paralyze you anyway. It was based on level of the arts so lvl 1 free action would be basically pointless against lvl 30 paralyze. As the levels of the offensive arts went up, so did the breakthrough percentage, even against equal level protection arts. So lvl 29 paralyze has probably a 20% chance to breakthrough lvl 29 free action, but lvl 59 paralyze has about a 50% chance to breakthrough level 59 free action. Breakthrough applied to all fatesender arts, Curse and Antidote had to breakthrough Poison to cure it. A 5th sphere Fatesender with 59 paralyze could keep you permanently paralyzed by chain casting it, even if you had 59 free action on. They could also use 59 darkness to keep an entire room permanently blinded by chain casting darkness even with 59 vision on.
If these percentages are correct, then they really should be changed. A 59 Paralyze should have a high percentage chance to break through a lower plateaued Free Action, but it shouldn't have the same percentage to break through a similar plateaued Free Action. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

The percentage of breakthrough should go up based on the distance between the two arts. The higher the offensive art, the higher chance it will have to break through. The closer they are to even then less of a chance. Just my two cents.
Minor arts changed to Majors- Restore, Free Action, Resist Fear, Protection, Vision, Reweave, and Scare have all been made into major arts for their respective focuses.
I can see this being a problem depending on the population of the Dream. If there are not a lot of Dreamers, there will be very few GateKeepers which would lead to very few conflicts. And if there are any conflicts, then they will certainly be short lived if there are any FateSenders about. Convert them back to minors and make them only go to 2nd plateau for non-focus. A 5th plateau Free Action would still be better than a 2nd plateau with breakthrough.

I feel like I'm rambling, so I'm going to avoid the rest of this. I haven't replied because I haven't been able to order my thoughts. I guess I still haven't been able to do that. :(
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Koi-Tus »

Mercanyin wrote:
Breakthrough- All offensive arts were granted breakthrough chance. For Example: If you had Free Action on, Paralyze had a chance to ignore your free action and paralyze you anyway. It was based on level of the arts so lvl 1 free action would be basically pointless against lvl 30 paralyze. As the levels of the offensive arts went up, so did the breakthrough percentage, even against equal level protection arts. So lvl 29 paralyze has probably a 20% chance to breakthrough lvl 29 free action, but lvl 59 paralyze has about a 50% chance to breakthrough level 59 free action. Breakthrough applied to all fatesender arts, Curse and Antidote had to breakthrough Poison to cure it. A 5th sphere Fatesender with 59 paralyze could keep you permanently paralyzed by chain casting it, even if you had 59 free action on. They could also use 59 darkness to keep an entire room permanently blinded by chain casting darkness even with 59 vision on.
If these percentages are correct, then they really should be changed. A 59 Paralyze should have a high percentage chance to break through a lower plateaued Free Action, but it shouldn't have the same percentage to break through a similar plateaued Free Action. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

The percentage of breakthrough should go up based on the distance between the two arts. The higher the offensive art, the higher chance it will have to break through. The closer they are to even then less of a chance. Just my two cents.
(
Not entirely accurate on the percentages, but the premise is correct. The initial break through chances were intended to max at around 50% for equal level arts, but were skewed down at lower spheres to add some buffer to less experienced players. De posted the original chart on the FB COD page: https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 2384_o.jpg.

It generally worked well in SOT until there were some high level Senders to better evaluate the effect of the higher percentages, and they proved to be excessive. The percentages will likely be tweaked at some point to a lower chance and discussions about other means of controlling for chain para/darkness with cool downs are a possibility too.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Koi-Alastar »

Want to echo Tus...please keep in mind that the breakthrough code and its percentages were developed when there were few SoT players above 3rd. At the time, FateSenders were worthless and so were GK. The original goal was to make both of these viable, and it did accomplish this. Things only started getting out of hand when we had 6th Sphere Senders and then also Abjure.

We've re-run some numbers already to get to a more desirable "happy medium". I do not believe any of us have any desire to remove breakthrough completely. It is needed to play a FateSender unless you have a pocket Abjurer, and is the only thing that prevents a GK from being moving Alterors.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Koi-Spark »

I think having the breakthrough is good and seems more realistic (I know, we're talking Underlight), but someone who learned Free Action at breakfast shouldn't be able to prevent all paralyzing effects. However, since there IS a breakthrough, I think the arts should be minors again with minor art level cap at 29. That way, you could have some protection when no GateKeepers around without having to depend on alterors. The alterors are good, but keep the higher levels rare (3rd/4th sphere at best).

I think it's also a good idea to find a happy medium with Forge again. I don't think someone should be able to forge all of their items and be completely unbeatable because they have unlimited dreamsoul elemens, max shields, unbeatable effect chakrams, and so on, but Forge really should be more than a glorified Inscribe. Right now it seems to be an Inscribe with pretty pictures instead of a codex. That's hardly worth the 5th sphere requirement and the requirements for training.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by MacEros »

At the end of EoC, breakthrough was changed. If you had Free Action on, and someone evoked Paralyze and it broke through, it did not paralyze you, but instead removed your free action and did an emote that announced to the room that your free action had fallen. It then became a race to reapply free action before a Fatesender could evoke paralyze on you again. What I liked about this change is it turned combat back to skill based instead of random number based.

Keep in mind this is coming from somebody who played one of the highest sphered Fatesenders in EoC. Paralyze at 50 has a 12 second duration and Darkness at 50 has a 30 second duration. If you are paralyzed in a battle for 12 seconds, you're pretty much guaranteed to be collapsed in that time if lag is not interfering. Is there any other art in the game that is that powerful? Perhaps Gatekeepers should have a chance on chakram hits to instantly collapse their target to balance it out? No, that would be dumb. Battles should not be decided by random dice roll.

When Fatesenders have a chance to breakthrough protection arts, it's also a nerf to Soulmaster's abjure. If players are being fast tracked to 5th sphere, then there should be no shortage of Soulmasters with abjure around that the Fatesenders can team up with.

If breakthrough is kept the way it is currently, even with numbers adjusted, Paralyze and Area Effect arts should not have a chance to breakthrough.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Cuero »

Breakthrough is going to be, and will always be, the biggest debate/gripe fest any version of Underlight will encounter. Fatesenders love it, it makes them powerful, everyone else hates it.

A 50 Fatesender should be able to break through against an orbit 1 protection art, but a 50 fatesender against a 50 protective art should be an incredibly small percentage of breakthrough. Even 10% breakthrough chance on equal levels is too high. We've seen it in practice, Trisha Pawm could just stand completely still with an energy-empowered shield, evoking paralyze, periodically dreamsoul, and know he'll eventually catch his target and chain paralyze if he wanted. At 10%, probability states they only have to evoke 10 times to get their target paralyzed. Ten times may seem like a lot, that's probably what... 30 seconds? 45?

It's just dumb. And people abuse the hell out of it, it's not used responsibly. And to level the playing field, I have to basically abuse Blast to try and break shields in order to stand a chance at defeating a target. In no circumstance should a player feel like they need to be an ass in order to have a chance at success.

Unless breakthrough is reworked, you're just going to have 90% (read: a high percent) of the population Fatesender, and the other 10% (read: a low percent) stubbornly playing the focus they like. Don't believe me? Look at focus trends when Blast was introduced years ago, Dreamseer mains skyrocketed, and when breakthrough was introduced, Fatesenders skyrocketed, Gatekeepers plummeted, as if they weren't already low. The majority of people play what is the most powerful.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Koi-Spark »

I moved the suggestions to increase the walk/run speed in Underlight to a new thread. Please see Increase walk/run speeds to discuss the new topic.

Thanks,
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Star Scream »

This single handedly explains to everyone here as to why I did not play SoT for very long. The way Lyra had the arts and focuses set up made it all a very level playing field and few, of any, arts or focus were completely overpowering. The "breakthrough" abilities as well as the changing of major and minor arts made SoT very unappealing to me. Granted, great ideas and like most of SoT proved to be amazingly creative and cool, it just didn'tallow the game to function smoothly and made for frustrating and wasteful battles. If UL could ever have a player base that meant, at any given moment you and 7 housemates wouldalways be online, it would have worked much better but if your only house Soulmaster isn't playing, you are basicly unable to fight a team that has even one FS or DS with their own SM in tow. Its just really not feasible to play a game that requires literally 4-6 hours a day genning during war time with the hope of collapsing maybe one enemy when he doesn't have a shield up for some dumb reason.... Just my take on it.
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Re: Art/Combat Changes since Lyra Version

Post by Dakkoth »

Star Scream wrote:This single handedly explains to everyone here as to why I did not play SoT for very long. The way Lyra had the arts and focuses set up made it all a very level playing field and few, of any, arts or focus were completely overpowering. The "breakthrough" abilities as well as the changing of major and minor arts made SoT very unappealing to me. Granted, great ideas and like most of SoT proved to be amazingly creative and cool, it just didn'tallow the game to function smoothly and made for frustrating and wasteful battles. If UL could ever have a player base that meant, at any given moment you and 7 housemates wouldalways be online, it would have worked much better but if your only house Soulmaster isn't playing, you are basicly unable to fight a team that has even one FS or DS with their own SM in tow. Its just really not feasible to play a game that requires literally 4-6 hours a day genning during war time with the hope of collapsing maybe one enemy when he doesn't have a shield up for some dumb reason.... Just my take on it.
I couldn't agree with Star Scream more.

If breakthrough is going to stay, however, it needs to be countered / diminished by the level of free action, resist fear, etc. So that a level 29 para has same breakthough against a 29 free action that a 59 para has against a 59 free action. This would give incentive to want to plat protective arts as well as have Gatekeepers around. And the success rate of Breakthrough would need a strong nerf too. Should never be higher than 10% at best considering the duration of para / blind / etc. at the very high levels. I feel that it's current state and success rate nullifies SoulMasters (Abjure) and Gakekeepers (all protective arts) and even DreamSeers (Vision).

Like Star Scream, I'm highly in favor of Lyra UL mechanics. There's just so much wrong with all the SoT changes. I think the only changes I even remotely thought could be "ok" were Spring/Enfeeblement, the changing of talismans focus (by use of house prime?), and the dreamsoul elemen delay (although I believe this should apply to all elemens not just dreamsoul).

Hearing this, I'm glad I didn't play SoT. If I did, I'd have quit when all these changes took place. They make the game less fun and I don't even have to play SoT UL to understand that.
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